This disclosure relates to a robot server assembly for serving table tennis balls, and more specifically to a robot server assembly that is portable, low cost, less prone to jamming and has improved ball pick up features.
Table tennis is a popular competitive and recreational sport. The object of the game is to have a player on each side of the table so that each player with a table tennis paddle can serve, return and rally a table tennis ball. Often, however, a player may wish to play the game of table tennis without another player. To that end, various table tennis ball serving devices or robots have been developed. The devices serve the ball to the player so that the player can return the shot in the direction of the robot.
Heretofore table tennis robots have incorporated various features. U.S. Pat. No. 3,794,001 to Newgarden describes a relatively simple device for imparting variations in the amount of spin applied to a ball being served by the server. The disclosure of the U.S. Pat. No. 3,794,001 is incorporated herein by reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,458 is directed to a table tennis robot with a panning head; U.S. Pat. No. 4,854,588 describes a table tennis robot capable of variations in shot trajectory; U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,380 discloses a table tennis robot having lateral, foldable troughs with a net array that captures balls, allows them to drop to the troughs where they are fed to the robot server; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,421 discloses a portable table tennis serving devices that include a robot server and a ball capture net. These last two recited patents employ a folding net structure is also employed for attachment to a table tennis table and for feeding balls to a robot ball server. The net structure includes a plurality of arms extending radially from a central member and netting suspended between the arms. The netting has a lower edge which is cooperatively connected with a trough device for receiving balls that fall from the netting. The trough is disposed to feed the balls to the robot serving device. The disclosures in the above described patents are incorporated by reference herein.
While many of the devices previously known to the art are functional and useful, they sometimes are susceptible to jamming when returned balls are captured and collected and fed into the mechanism for recycling the ball to the robot server.
It is desirable, therefore, to have a sophisticated server device for sequentially serving a plurality of balls to the player employing a relatively simple, inexpensive design, which addresses the ball jamming problem and which can be offered at reasonable price points to the customer.